Tennessee Basketball: SEC Champions and NCAA Tourney Contenders

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00:00 [MUSIC]

00:05 All right, the NCAA tournament, we're getting closer to sort of figuring out

00:09 who the top seeds are gonna be.

00:11 You know what's interesting is I think the tournament, once again,

00:13 Mike is probably gonna be upside down.

00:15 But I feel really confident in the top four or five teams in college basketball,

00:19 and especially after last night with Tennessee beating South Carolina and

00:24 capturing the regular season SEC title, which really doesn't happen all that

00:27 often, but congrats to them, naturally, they end up winning 66 to 59,

00:32 the rank number four in the country now.

00:36 And my guess is they probably just need to win a game or

00:39 two in that SEC tournament to lock down a top four seed.

00:42 Although I guess it is fair to say Arizona's right on their heels too,

00:45 if they were to fall to Arizona was to win, maybe they would move ahead.

00:48 >> Yeah, for me, Arizona lost their number one when Tennessee

00:54 won the SEC regular season by going to South Carolina

00:58 on top of their wins last week against Auburn and Alabama.

01:01 They have done an amazing job lately.

01:06 I've liked this Tennessee team since Dalton Connect emerged,

01:10 not as a very good player, but as a legitimately great player.

01:13 He changes their offense.

01:16 And this is a team that has been defensively at or

01:19 near elite for most of the time while Rick Barnes has been head coach.

01:24 We're on close to a decade of that now.

01:27 Defensively elite, but offensively often far from it.

01:30 They had a really good offensive team with Grant Williams in 2019.

01:35 And they were able to make the sweet 16, but

01:38 lost to Purdue there in a fabulous game.

01:41 But they have struggled in the tournament since because their offenses haven't been

01:45 able to generate buckets, Connect changes that in nearly every game he plays.

01:51 And that makes them much more dangerous because he's so good.

01:55 They can stretch the floor, Santiago Vescovi becomes a really nice

02:00 complimentary score instead of a player upon whom too much responsibility

02:05 offensively was placed.

02:07 Jonas Adu inside, really good, quick, big guy that benefits now from all that space.

02:14 So I think Tennessee is really dangerous, but I wouldn't let it let up here.

02:18 I mean, they have Kentucky coming in on the weekend to Thompson Bowling Arena, and

02:23 as well as the SEC tournament.

02:25 I don't think Arizona is going to lose many more.

02:27 I don't imagine that they'll go to Southern California and struggle there.

02:33 UCLA has not been going in the right direction lately.

02:37 SC has not been going in the right direction for most of the year.

02:40 And so I think Arizona wins there.

02:43 And if they do what they should do in the Pac-12 tournament,

02:45 I think there's pressure on Tennessee and the SEC to at least make their final

02:51 if they wanna hold on to that fourth one seed.

02:53 [MUSIC]

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